Animal Services in News Again

I have heard stories in recent weeks of adopters from Animal Care Services taking home pets who have become horribly ill. The owners run up expensive vet bills trying to save their new pet, only to watch the pet eventually die.

Unfortunately, this happens occasionally — maybe once or twice a year — from most shelters. When you deal with live animals, there is always a chance one will get sick, regardless of vaccinations, and they won’t make it. But it is the exception and not the norm for most shelters.

At Animal Care Services, the exception has become common place: many adopted animals are getting sick, making it news, as well as something that needs to be addressed.

I recall the many emotional meetings that occurred right after the Animal Care Services story broke in the Express-News over a year and a half ago. People chanted to stop the killing, but had little else to say in regards to real solutions. What I feared is that the City would feel forced by the community to make changes quickly, and therefore not have the proper protocols in place to make it all run smoothly.

In order to have healthy adoptable animals, vaccine and daily cleaning protocols needed to be in place. This sounds easy — and it is on paper, but not in implementation. People need to be trained to perform these protocols and then follow through with them daily. An expert in animal welfare needed to be hired to address these issues. Keeping animals healthy in large populations is not easy and requires people trained in disease prevention to train the staff.

It sounds like the city has written some cleaning protocols, but they are not being implemented daily. As far as I know, no vaccine protocols exist, so animals coming in only get vaccinated if they are selected as adoptable, and that could take five days to happen.

In the meantime, healthy animals are exposed to sick animals; animals are nose-to-nose in their kennel spaces with no separation barriers; and kennels probably aren’t receiving the cleaning they need to prevent disease, so when one animal has the disease, an entire population of animals is susceptible.

The Humane Society stopped taking pets from the city about a year ago because of distemper and other diseases.

The city can’t wait until they get their new facility to make these changes. They need to begin now in order to control the disease problems at the facility.

Here’s a laundry list of what the City needs to do:

• Adopt a vaccine protocol so that healthy, adoptable animals are vaccinated as soon as they arrive.

• Isolate or euthanize sick animals to prevent the spread of disease

• Scan all animals for microchips upon entering the shelter and again before euthanasia — in the hopes of reducing the time an owned animal has to spend at the shelter and reduce the number of animals euthanized.

• Call owners on animals that come in with a collar and tag, such as an ID tag or city license. Don’t allow the animal to sit for 10 days waiting for the owner to find them.

• Require animals reclaimed by owners to be vaccinated if proof of vaccinations can not be provided.

• Enforce daily cleaning protocols and maintain logs, so you know who and when spaces are being cleaned

The good news is that the city has begun training numerous staff to perform euthanasia-by-injection.

There is a specialist coming to spend an entire week at Animal Care Services in order to teach the staff animal handling in the shelter in the hopes of getting rid of catchpoles. (The Humane Society has purchased a lot of the humane equipment to be used in that class and afterwards at the facility.)

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About the Author

Cathy M. Rosenthal has more than 25 years of experience in public relations, communications and humane education in the animal welfare field. She has worked for local humane societies and national humane groups, appearing on hundreds of television and radio news and public affairs programs to address animal issues. She currently is a consultant for local and national animal welfare organizations, writing grants, annual reports and other marketing materials. She is also the author of several children's books about animals.